A quest for literary wonder; book reviews and musings on writing.

Menu

Why I’m telling my friends not to read Gone Girl.

I was excited to read Gone Girl after all the hype. And it sucked me in. It gripped and intrigued me. But really, I seriously wished I hadn’t read it at all. Most books have some sort of value or idea or something to recommend them. But this one felt like eating far too much sugar and suddenly feeling angry with yourself, the world and sugar itself for tricking you into such a terrible place.

The characters start off intriguing and gripping. The premise as you probably know is that Amy, Nick’s wife, has disappeared and it looks like she’s been murdered – and all evidence points to Nick. We see things through Nick’s perspective and Amy’s diary, and both characters seem familiar, with things we can recognise in ourselves and in our relationships with others.

But in the end, I think the book just went too far. Perhaps there are people like Nick and Amy, but if there are they are rare, and I don’t want to read about them. Their characters and the plot twists just got more and more bizarre and twisted, and in the end all that was left was a selfish, nasty, cruel and completely heartless version of humanity. There were nasty scenes too – things you just don’t want to think about.

I’m definitely not going to watch the film. And if you haven’t, I’d advise you not to read it.

2 thoughts on “Why I’m telling my friends not to read Gone Girl.”

I totally agree with you about Gone Girl! I read it hmm last week (late I know) and I had so high expectations for it. And then…it was good yeah, different in a way and it had interesting beginnign. After the beginnig the story went I don’t know where and I was really disappointed with Amys character development. And ending…seriously.

I’ve heard that second book of this author is better but I’m not too interested to read it